David Harris (born 1946 in Fresno, California) is an American journalist and author. He is known chiefly for his role as an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War, most notably as a leading opponent of the Draft … He has written several other books, as well as many articles for the Rolling Stone, the New York Times Magazine and other periodicals. On October 27, 2004, Harris published a new book which draws on rare interviews with American, Iranian, and European participants in the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, called The Crisis: The President, the Prophet, and the Shah – 1979 and the Coming of Militant Islam (see rewievs below). In it, Harris tells the story of the 444 days from an insider’s perspective. (full text and Biography).

He tells: … “I was transported, as federal prisoners are transported, in leg irons with a chain through my belt loops and my hands shackled to the chain in my belt loops. With myself and two federal marshals, one on each side of me, we got on the elevator in Oakland; and we got up about three or four floors and stopped, and in steps a woman who had business up in the courthouse, I guess. She got in and the door closed, and she looked at me and I’d been in jail a month at this point and been on strike and hadn’t had a shower for almost that entire month. I’m all chained up and she looks at me and says, Boy, what did you do to get all chained up like that? You must be an awful bad man!’ I looked at her and I said, I didn’t kill anybody. And she said, Oh, you are a bad man” … (full text).

His book: The Crisis: The President, the Prophet, and the Shah 1979 and the Coming of Militant Islam, 470 pages, October 27, 2004, ISBN:0316323942 – The conflict between militant Islam and the West was catalyzed in Iran in 1979, making this the best kind of history: a book that helps us understand not only the past, but the present. Harris traveled to Iran and Europe to interview participants whom previous books had ignored, so for the first time we also get the full, inside story of what happened. A few book reviews:

… He barely discusses the origins of militant Islam as a political movement. His account is not so much about the three main actors cited in the title—President Jimmy Carter, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and the shah—as about the maneuverings of their top aides … (Middle East Forum);

… So when the embassy staff saw the Muslim Students running around the courtyard “like little kids in an amusement park,” in the words of one Marine, they assumed this would be a repeat of the Valentine’s Day seizure. Surely rescue would soon be on its way, … (Goliath);

… In the coffee shops of the Middle East, where only conspiracies are believed and the simple truth is considered naivete or duplicity, America’s motives are invariably assumed to be malicious … (NY Times);